Why does it say:
That country will only be able to commit the following attacks or harmful spy ops against you: standard strikes, planned strikes, steal tech, bomb banks, burn oil, and burn bushels.

But when I try and do Espionage: Sending your agents into opposing research labs, this operation is the only one that physically benefits you. If successful, you will capture a small portion of your opponent's technology points.

It says: GDI authority will not let you perform this operation without declaring war!

I don't understand why I can't steal tech from people with GDI.


Also you should change:

In addition, you will not be allowed to commit offensive acts which are not standard strikes, planned strikes, or beneficial spy ops against other countries unless they have attacked you more than once.

To

In addition, you will not be allowed to commit offensive acts which are not standard strikes, planned strikes, or beneficial spy ops against other countries unless they have attacked or committed harmful spy ops on you more than once.

or change

that country will only be able to commit the following attacks or harmful spy ops against you

To

that country will only be able to commit the following attacks against you

It's the best thing ever, you only get to do black ops and special attacks if a GDI country hits you more than once.

So you cant attach yourself as a leech to someone or grief them for no reason, but if they hit you twice all bets are off.

It's as good a design as we can hope for, tbh. Primary and express used to be a guarantee to get suicided by someone you never touched.

Maybe my reading comp is bad but doesnt the above say one can steal tech but the game blocks it ? Im not arguing about the rules Im saying the way they are written doesnt correspond with what you can do.

It says you can steal tech from gdi countries but you cant and it says you dont break gdi with harmful spy opts but you do.....

Sure we play the game we have not the one we want but its hard to plan when i dont know what the actual rules are....

Yeah theres a lot of that going around lol. :)

A lot of things are weird and not written or written in a way that doesn't match the actual function.

Even semi-active devs would be able to slowly chip away at those inconsistencies one by one.

I understand that the original intent of GDI was to prevent countries more than 2x the networth of another country from attacking the other country, which precluded hostile intent spy ops, etc. Without declaring war on that country first, and vice versa so that the giant grazing bottom feeders could be protected from stampede by their sheep the same way, you had to declare war on the larger country before you could conduct any offensive operations.

Point was to limit size differentials, however, GDI was not supposed to protect you from countries of similar networth, so somebody generally in your scores list wouldn't be effected by this rule.

The guy I tried to spy on, informationally, not offensively, or hostile, mind you was denied, and he was right behind me in the scores list.

So, how is that doing what it was intended to do, OR what it is stated to do?